Weapon strength: A uniformly distributed random number taken from within the range listed as "Weapon Strength" on the equipped weapon. The weapon damage used for a skill will typically be that of the weapon associated with that skill; utility and elite skills are typically not affected by weapon damage and use a range based on the player's level.

Power is the primary attribute for calculating how much damage is dealt. Power can be increased through equipment, the might boon, traits, and various effects that provide bonuses to power, such as consumables. The base power attribute for a level 80 character is 926.

Weapon strength is the average value of the damage range for a weapon. The weapon range is a uniformly distributed range of possible values with a single value being chosen at random. For one-handed weapons, the damage inflicted is calculated based on the weapon strength of weapon corresponding with the weapon slot. Main hand weapon slots inflict damage based on the weapon strength of the main hand weapon, off-hand weapons slots inflict damage based on the weapon strength of the off-hand weapon.

Defense is calculated as the sum of the toughness attribute and the defense value. The defense rating is the sum of all the defense values provided by armor and any equipped shield. Trinket slots do not provide defense, although they can provide a bonus to toughness. The profession determines whether the player can wear heavy, medium, or light armor, where heavy armor provides the most defense and light armor provides the least defense.

All other sources of damage scale linearly with power, except for burst skills as they are intertwined with the weapon itself. Due to this, the skill damage in the tooltip for burst skills is incorrect. These sources include:

Utility skills have their own damage range that scales with level and will be much lower than the weapon strength of weapons of the same level. For example, Bull's Charge will inflict 390 damage while Whirlwind Attack inflicts 553. This is done on purpose to dissuade players from using utility skills as damage and instead to augment damage being done by weapons.

Elite skills don't deal damage directly, instead they use summons, transforms, environmental weapons, and similar. These often simply scale with level, dealing a fixed amount of damage at level 80. Transforms tend to double or triple base stats, as with Rampage, to deal the additional damage. Dagger Storm, Tornado, and Whirlpool deal direct damage and have low skill coefficients to make up for the loss of weapon strength.

One of the main issues is weapon skills inflict a variable range of damage. This can be resolved through the use of PvP Steady weapons, that provide a fixed weapon strength value. This keeps all values in the damage equation constant, therefore the skill coefficient can be derived based on how much damage the skill inflicts.

The skill coefficient for weapon skills can be calculated using the damage equation. We have many variables, but fortunately there are tools for getting constant values. The issue of weapon strength is solved through the use of PvP Steady weapons as noted above. The power and armor values can be fixed by unequipping all equipment that provides attribute bonuses. The power for a level 80 player with no equipment is 926. The toughness for a level 80 player with no equipment is 926. The armor value of the foe we are using the skill on is needed. Fortunately, the testing dummies in Hall of Memories are suitable punching bags, but we need to know how much armor they have.

We will use the heavy golem for our calculations. We can now use the equation to calculate the skill coefficient based on the damage inflicted by the weapon skill based on the type of weapon. If we use a dagger, our formula will look like:

Damage = 119 * 926 * Skill coefficient / 2600

We can then solve the equation for the skill coefficient given the damage.

Many traits provide implicit effects, effects that are not displayed in the effect bar or in the tooltips. An issue with traits that provide an unknown increase in damage is the relatively small difference in damage done by steady weapons, you will likely only see an increase in 2-3 damage. This can cause the percent increase to fluctuate +/- 1%. This can be narrowed down to a range by increasing power and measuring the increase in damage on critical hits. The percent increase in damage can be calculated as:

Traits that trigger effects are identical to skills in that they use skill effects. Assume that there is a hidden tooltip that holds all the information about the effect from the trait. You can identify the name of the skill if you are hit with it by another player and view the "System" tab in the chat panel. You can also design a pseudo-tooltip from the information as if it were a real skill.